


But the Pavement Always Stayed Beneath My Feet Before

by nik_knows_nothing



Series: The Street Where You Live [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Light Angst, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 19:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17432021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: The second time MJ meets Spider-Man, it goes like this:It's two days after homecoming.And the whole city knows what's happened.





	But the Pavement Always Stayed Beneath My Feet Before

**Author's Note:**

> First, thank you so, so much to everyone who read and commented on "I Have Often Walked Down This Street Before"!!! You guys are so sweet, and so thoughtful, and all of your comments were amazing!!!
> 
> Second, special thanks to the_most_beautiful_broom and her friends! I know this is kind of outside the usual fandom, but thanks for checking it out anyways!!
> 
> Third, YOU GUYS, THAT TRAILER??? HOW AM I SO READY FOR A MOVIE THAT DOESN'T COME OUT FOR ANOTHER SIX MONTHS????

So the second time MJ meets Spider-Man, it goes like this.

It’s two days after homecoming.

And the whole city knows what’s happened.

Or, at least, the whole city _thinks_ it knows what happened.

Certainly, most people know bits and pieces—Spider-Man crashing a plane onto the beach, and a man with great metal wings who slams him into the sand, over and over and over again.

Or else they know the other side of the story—Liz Allan standing small and alone, hugging her arms in close to her side, while _that loser Peter Parker_ flees the school gym.

It’s probably a good thing, MJ thinks, that Parker’s so bad at keeping secrets.

Because if she didn’t know Peter Parker was Spider-Man—or is it the other way around?—she probably would have to kill him for that alone.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it, that she _does_ know

It’s a real problem.

Because normally, she wouldn’t hesitate to tear Parker a new one for such an unbelievably dickish move—

But instead, she satisfies herself with sticking close to Liz—and Betty and Cindy are doing the same, so she’s not being weird—and, when Flash starts to make a joke about Mr. Allan, glaring at him so hard that he actually pales and takes half a step back.

“MJ,” Liz says, when she notices. “It’s okay.”

_No_ , MJ thinks. _No, it’s not._

Because it’s not okay, that Mr. Allan should be so incredibly shortsighted, that Liz and her mom have to move to the other side of the country to get out from under his shadow.

And it’s not okay—MJ’s sat up all night, reading over the different reports, trying to make sense of what happened—it’s not okay what companies like Stark’s are doing, using their inside advantage with government officials to earn themselves the no-bid defense and city management contracts that effectively squeeze the life out of companies like Mr. Allan’s.

But mostly what’s not okay—more than anything else, what’s not okay is that there’s nothing MJ can do.

There’s no protest she can attend, there’s no action to be taken, there’s no one person she can shout at or argue with to make things better. 

And so she hugs her books a little bit closer to her chest at the end of the school day and says, “So, Oregon, huh?”

Cindy and Betty shoot her nervous  glances, like there’s a chance Liz might break down again if she hears the name, but Liz is stronger than that, effortlessly graceful in a way that MJ has always sort of envied, just a little.

“Oregon,” she agrees, and tries bravely for a laugh. “I mean, it’s supposed to be super pretty out there, right? All those trees and stuff?”

“You think Twilight would just lie about that?” Betty asks, all exaggerated innocence, and that pulls another weak sort of smile out of Liz.

“If there’s an AcaDec team out there,” MJ says, before she can decide whether this is a good idea or not. “In Oregon, I mean. You’d better whip them into shape, alright?”

And again, Liz is stronger than people seem to think, because she just blinks for a second, looking a little taken aback.

But then she grins, sharp and proud.

“You better believe it,” she says. “I’m not letting you guys rest on our laurels once I’m gone.”

MJ relaxes, because she knows the other girl got what she was trying to say, and that’s alright, then, because she can at least do that much.

“Cool,” she says. “See you at Nationals, then.”

And then Liz’s mom is there to come take her away, and there are a thousand reporters waiting outside, with cameras flashing and microphones waving wildly.

“You think they’d notice if I went out and said I was Liz?” MJ wonders to Betty and Cindy. “Like, how much information do you think they’re actually going on?”

“Don’t,” Cindy warns, but Betty looks thoughtful, and says, “I bet you could give them An Interview.”

“Bet I could,” MJ agrees, absent.

But in the end, she has to settle for helping Liz and her mom shove their way through all the reporters, blocking the cameras while the two Allan women hide their faces in the collars of their coats and baring her teeth in a snarl every time a reporter gets too close.

She was born tall for a reason, MJ thinks.

Maybe this was it.

And then Liz and Mrs. Allan are in their car, windows locked tight, and MJ and Betty and Cindy drive the reporters back, back, so that they can drive away.

And then they’re gone.

And there’s nothing else MJ can do.

So she watches until the car turns around the corner, until the crowd of reporters has started to disperse, disappointed, and then she goes and puts her extra books back in her locker.

As she’s about to close the door, she glances at the locker that’s just a little ways down from her own, and then wishes she hadn’t, because that’s something else to think about.

She hasn’t told Parker.

About the whole super-secret alter-ego thing.

Not yet.

For a lot of reasons, honestly, but mostly because it was one of those awkward situations where she probably should have told him the first day she’d seen him again.

And she hadn’t.

She’s still not very sure why.

She hadn’t, and now it’s been another month, and she doesn’t know how to get around that other than walking up and being like, _hey, so did you know that your secret identity is probably the least secret identity in the history of secret identities?_

And she hasn’t quite been able to make herself do that just yet.

Again, for a lot of reasons.

And she meant to, that first day, she really did, except that when they’d been sitting in the cafeteria and Leeds had been late and MJ had been watching Parker from over the top of her book, she’d been this close—

And he’d been staring at Liz.

And really, everyone knows, trying to talk with Parker while he’s staring at Liz—was staring at Liz—is pretty much useless.

So that was the reason—the _only_ reason—why she’d shrunk back down behind her book, wished she wasn’t so tall for the first time in her life, and hadn’t said a thing.

Just because she didn’t want to wreck his concentration.

That was the only reason.

So yeah, she’s still keeping that one to herself.

MJ chews on her lip and looks at the other locker, with permanent marker smears where some idiot whose name probably rhymes with _dash_ has scrawled another stupid, homophobic insult with a sharpie, and Parker hasn’t been able to wipe it all away yet.

Then she slams her own locker door shut with a little more force than necessary and stomps out of the school and down the stairs, wondering how on earth she’s going to find one spandex-suited weirdo in all of New York.

As it turns out, it’s not all that difficult.

Two blocks from school, Spider-Man is sitting over the archway that leads down into the subway, on his phone again— _God, kids these days, always on their phones_ , MJ thinks wryly—but he’s just staring at it blankly, not tapping away, just looking.

If it weren’t for the improbably smooth surface where he sits without sliding off, she might have passed him over as just a kid in a costume, because he’s not wearing his Stark suit.

She remembers this, though, remembers from the grainy cell phone photos and firsthand accounts she’d read online.

The suit is gone.

Spider-Man himself has been gone for a few weeks now.

Some people had thought he was dead.

But he’s not, and he’s back, even if the suit isn’t, and now he’s sitting sideways over a subway station and staring at his phone.

MJ takes a second longer to pluck up her nerves, and then remembers that this is Peter Parker, and she’s giving the issue way more thought than it deserves, and so goes and knocks one-two-three on the side of the archway.

“Could have used your help at school today,” she says, when he looks down.

For a second, he just blinks down at her, and she’s this close to telling him to just drop the act, alright, she knows he knows who she is.

But then he frowns, and doesn’t even try to disguise his voice, because, again, Parker is just the absolute worst at keeping a secret.

“Uh,” he says. “What?”

MJ crosses her arms and gives him an unimpressed look.

"He had a daughter,” she says, as though he somehow didn’t know, as though she hadn’t seen him, out of the corner of her eye, shooting guilty looks in their direction all day long. “The Vulture. Toomes. He has a daughter.” 

_Has_ a daughter, she reminds herself, because Toomes isn’t dead, and ignores the nasty little voice in the back of her mind that says it might be easier if he was.

Spider-Man is still looking at her, unreadable.

Then he sighs, slides off the side of the archway, and shrugs, uneasy.

“I know.”

“She’s moving,” MJ says. “To the other side of the country.”

"I know.”

"She goes to my school.”

"I—” He almost says _I know_ again, she can tell, but catches himself at the last moment. “Okay.”

MJ glances down the steps to the subway station. 

“I don’t have books for you to carry,” she announces. “But I still need to head home. So—”

She’s already started down the steps before he gets a clue, and then she can hear him, from a few steps up—“Oh! Oh, right. Sorry”—and then he’s clattering down the stairs beside her.

Really, it’s pretty amazing that Spider-Man’s able to sneak up on anyone, with the amount of noise he’s making.

They wait for the train in silence, because people keep coming up to ask if he’s the real Spider-Man, or to ask for selfies, or to slap him on the back and tell him _hey, man, great job on the beach_ —

He looks more and more guilty each time.

MJ stares straight ahead and pretends not to notice.

People still give them a wide berth when they board, so that there are too many people crammed into the car with them—as opposed to _way too many_ —and MJ’s not really sure if she should talk or wait out the ride in silence.

It's possible she may not have thought through all the way.

So they go a few stops in silence, but then the awkward lull is too much, too loud, and all the people around them are all busy with their own issues, and it occurs to MJ that most of them probably think he’s just a particularly dedicated cosplayer.

After all, why would the real Spider-Man need to take the subway?

After another five minutes, MJ clears her throat, glances sideways over at Spider-Parker, who’s studying the floor with way too much interest.

“There were paparazzi waiting for her at the school,” she tells him, quiet, and his head snaps back up at once. “When school let out.”

He hisses out a breath, which just sounds _weird_ , through the mask. “I thought they might be.”

MJ shoots a look at the middle school kid who’s trying to film them on his phone without being obvious, but when she glances over, Parker’s giving him this dorky little wave, so she guesses her glare’s not going to be enough to make the kid cut it out.

_I thought they might be._

She tries not to get mad. “And you didn’t think they might want some help dealing with that?”

Parker looks away from the kid, takes a second too long to answer.

“Honestly?” he asks. “No.”

There are a lot of potential answers hiding in that tiny, two-letter word.

“No,” MJ echoes. “No, like, no, you didn’t think they’d need help, or no, you didn’t think they’d need your help?” 

“Both,” Parker says, and then—“Neither. I don’t know.”

MJ waits.

“Mostly the second,” he admits, and she nods.

“That’s what I figured.”

The train slows as it pulls into another stop, and they stand back to let people off—a few of the people crowding on give them some weird looks, but it’s like the entire train car’s collectively decided to ignore them, which she’s more or less okay with.

There are still too many people, so she has to take a step closer to Parker, who’s cheating, because he just plants his feet as the train starts to move again, and doesn’t have to worry about holding on to anything else.

This, MJ thinks, as the train picks up speed and she has to stretch to grab the nearest support pole, is supremely unfair.

As they speed along, light flickering weirdly across the floor, Peter says “Is—“

He breaks off suddenly, takes some time to figure out where he’s going with this, but he needn’t have bothered. MJ thinks she probably knows.

“Are they—” he starts, and then tries again. “Is she okay?”

_Well_ , MJ thinks. _That’s a pretty stupid question_

“No,” she says, and leaves it at that.

“Oh,” he says, sounding smaller than ever.

They ride the rest of the way in silence.

If Parker’s regretting tagging along with her, MJ thinks, he’s doing a good job not showing it.

Instead, he follows Proper Subway Etiquette and doesn’t interact with anyone, and they stand side by side and wait out the rest of the ride without talking, by some sort of unspoken agreement.

Once, she almost falls, and he almost—almost—makes like he’s going to try and steady her.

But his hand stops halfway to her arm, and then he pulls back again, and she says nothing and pretends she didn’t notice.

The train is starting to slow again.

This is her stop, and so MJ begins pushing through the crowded car before the train has even stopped completely, trusting that Parker will follow.

He does.

They climb back up another flight of stairs, and once they’re back up in the light of day again, MJ thinks back over his question, does her best to look unaffected as she shrugs.

“You know what teenagers are like,” she says, and realizes her mistake a second too late when Spider-Man turns overly-wide, panicky eyes in her direction.

“I—why do you say that?” he asks, voice high and squeaky all over again.

MJ rolls her eyes.

“I assume you are or were a teenager at some point,” she says, because she could put him on the spot, watch him freak out a little more, but she’s not  _that_ cruel, not really. “Unless the Spider part of the name is way more literal, and you actually are only, like, six months old, and your lifespan is only, like, three years.”

She can’t help bringing that up, though.

Just to see what he says.

But anyhow, if she was expecting some grand confession or something, it’s clearly not meant to be, which is good, she guesses, as it means he does still have some idea what _secret_ means.

“Some spiders can live up to twenty-five years,” he says instead.

“Good for them,” MJ says. “What, are you on a trivia team or something?”

“Or something.”

He sounds amused, like they’re sharing an inside joke.

“Anyway,” MJ says, because they’re veering too far from the topic at hand, veering a little too close to things she already knows. “You know what people are like.”

“Yeah,” he says, Yeah, I know.”

Of course he does.

“She’s not okay,” MJ says, and then frowns, because she hates the way that that sounds. “I think—I hope she will be. I’m sure she will be.”

It still doesn’t sound like enough.

“She’s—Liz is brilliant,” she says, because someone like Liz should never have to settle for just being okay. “She’s going to be amazing.”

“I know,” Parker says, and she looks over at him, to let him know he’s slipping again. “I mean—I hope—I have to hope. That she’ll be alright. Eventually.”

_I have to hope._

She wonders how many times a day he tells himself things like that.

She doesn’t ask, though.

“’Until the day,’” she says instead. “’When God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words—‘”

“’Wait and hope.’”

He finishes the quote in an almost reverent tone, and when she looks over at him, he laughs, quick and hollow, and shakes his head.

“It doesn’t feel like enough, does it?”

MJ thinks about the way Liz had ducked her head during the mad rush to the car, about the way Mrs. Allan had smiled when some of the teachers had tried to offer their condolences—

“No,” she says. “Not really.”

They walk another block or so.

Then Parker says, “’There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to the other, nothing more.’”

She’s not really sure what he means for that to mean.

So rather than ask, she just raises an eyebrow and says, “Well, we’re just full of Dumas quotes today, aren’t we?”

“Eh,” he says, and shrugs. “I read _Count of Monte Cristo_ recently. It’s not completely forgotten yet."

Yeah, of course he read it recently, it’s literally what they’re going over in Miss Evans’s AP Lit class, way to be totally not obvious, _Parker_ —

To be fair, though, she sort of assumes that he blanks out in most of his classes, so it’s nice to know that some of it’s sinking in, she guesses.

“Hmm,” she says out loud, because it would be impossible, to say anything else.

_It doesn’t feel like enough, does it?_

“If you’re feeling guilty—” she begins, only to break off when he looks over again, so quick that she knows she’s hit the nail right on the head.

Not like it was a real mystery.

“Right,” she says. “Of course you are.”

“Comes with the territory, I think.”

“Right,” she says again. “Don’t have to tell you how arrogant that is, do I?”

“Not really.”

Well. At least he’s self-aware about it.

“And that’s not going to stop you?”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding a little too wistful for her tastes. “Not really.”

MJ searches her mind for something that fits, finds absolutely nothing, and so lowers her standards and tries again.

“’Still, from an artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately lead us into guilt.’”

Looking over, she sees the eyes on the suit narrowed in thought, like he’s trying to place it and can’t quite manage the task.

“I don’t remember that part,” he admits, after a few more seconds of what looks like very concentrated thought.

She doesn’t blame him. “That’s because it’s wildly out of context.”

He laughs, and it doesn’t sound quite so hopeless as before. “Of course it is.”

“Also a very Rousseau point of view.”

“Ah. So wildly out of touch, then.”

_Well_ , _then_ , MJ thinks. _So_ _that’s nice and bleak._

“Is that the official superhero stance on things?”

He makes an over-exaggerated face, clear even through the mask. “I don’t think there’s an official superhero stance on anything.”

She thinks there are probably a few generalizations.

"Crime bad, vigilantism good?” she guesses.

“Some crimes good,” he counters. “Accords bad.”

It’s a fair point. “All in context, then?”

“Something like that.”

Spider-Man—Parker—she still doesn’t know what to call him in her head—stops suddenly, and MJ does, too.

“Do you think—” he starts, and then shakes his head. “f I asked Mr. Stark to look out for—for Toomes’s family. Do you think that would be good?”

And there’s the million dollar question.

“How should I know?” MJ asks, because she knows he wouldn’t have asked without a reason, without an idea, and she wants to hear what it is.

“No, I just meant—you’re friends with—” He almost says Liz, she knows he does, but, again, he catches himself just in time. “With the daughter, aren’t you?”

“Kind of,” MJ says. “I think so.”

“If Mr. Stark helped them,” Parker says slowly. “Helped them get settled, I mean. Would that be—would that be good, or would it be, you know—”

“Rubbing it in.”

“Right.”

MJ thinks about it.

She honestly doesn’t know.

But if guilt really is a trademark of the superhero profession, there’s a chance that Spider-Man’s mentor shares in the same deal.

They stand in the odd, slanting light through the buildings for a few more moments, and then MJ turns and starts walking again.

“Liz’s mom is a professor of finance,” she says, as Parker falls into step beside her.

“Okay,” he says.

“She’s going to look for a position on the West Coast,” she says, mimicking everything Liz told them, as well as everything that she didn’t. “At a community college, Liz guesses. Somewhere where—”

She breaks off mid-sentence, because it’s still too new, and she doesn’t want to remind Parker, not all over again, about what exactly it all means.

As it turns out, she doesn’t have to.

“Where they’ll be so happy to get a fully-ranked professor,” Parker guesses. “That they won’t look a gift horse in the mouth by checking her last name too closely.”

There’s no point in denying it, so MJ just nods. “Exactly.”

He hums a little, thinking it over, and she watches as he pushes a hand back over his mask again, the same absentminded gesture that she’d noticed before, the first time.

“I don’t know a lot of colleges in Oregon,” he admits at last. “For finance, anyhow. I mean—”

“Reed College pays all full professors six figures,” MJ cuts in, before he can give her some half-assed excuse for why he would be looking at colleges for any other major. “Tops out at 154,000.”

That gets his attention.

She can see the question about to be asked, and so she figures she’ll spare him the effort, make her own confession.

“I looked it up,” she says. “When I heard where she was going.”

And that should be the end of the questions, but it isn’t, because this is Peter Parker she’s dealing with, he’s got about a thousand questions for everything, when he cares enough to pay attention.

“Why?”

She was sort of hoping he wouldn’t ask that one.

But he’s looking at her closely enough that she shrugs and pretends to be casual about it.

“I thought I might see you.”

He studies her for a second longer, and then nods, understanding.

“And you thought I might ask.”

“I figured I had a pretty good chance,” she says, and wonders if that makes her seem like she’s being too opportunistic, or if it’s just being honest.

But all Parker says, either way, is—

“I’ll see what Mr. Stark can do.”

MJ scoffs in spite of her determination to be polite about Stark for Parker’s sake. “Tony Stark is one of the richest men in the world, Bug Boy. He can do just about anything.”

“Money,” he says, thoughtful. “The real superpower.”

He doesn’t seem offended, and so MJ laughs a little.

“Ain’t that the truth?”

Five seconds or so pass, and then, blurting it out like he’s physically incapable of letting it slide for any longer, Parker says—

“You know, spiders aren’t bugs.”

MJ rolls her eyes.

“No way,” she says, flat as possible.  “I had no idea. You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” he says, overly sincere, and she wonders if it’s been bugging him—ha-ha, _bugging_ —since the last time they spoke. “It’s the truth.”

“Well,” she says, matching his serious tone. “Knock me down with a feather.”

“Nah, I don’t like my odds,” Parker says, and then, before she can respond, asks, “Do you think, if Mr. Stark says yes—”

“He’d freaking better.”

“—do you think they’ll take it?”

Alright, so there’s another question.

This time, MJ has no idea of the answer.

“I think,” she says carefully, hating the fact that she doesn’t know. “I think that they’ll appreciate the help.”

Spider-Man scoffs. “That’s not an answer.”

“Well, I’m not Liz.”

Her answer comes out a little too quickly, and she knows it was too loud, and she bites her lip, stares straight ahead, and doesn’t think about why that felt so bad, so petty, so childish to say.

“I know,” Parker says, like he’s confused by the strength of her words, is trying to figure out where he overstepped his bounds. “I know you’re not.”

It still feels off.

They walk another half a block or so without speaking, and then MJ sighs.

“How about this?” she offers. “Mr. Stark pulls some strings at Reed College. That stays, you know, kind of quiet. And then he holds a very public announcement—”

“And offers financial compensation,” Parker realizes, because of course he knows where she wanted to go with it. “The Allans can accept it if they want.”

“Or not,” MJ reminds him.

“Or not,” he concedes. “If they want.”

“Better,” she says. “Not good. But better.”

It’s all that can be done.

MJ doesn't like not being able to help.

In a flash, she's back in DC, staring up at the little blue and red speck so high above, unable to do anything except watch and hope and think,  _please, my friends, please, anyone, they're my friends--_

Even now, it's enough to put a sick twist in her stomach.

She hates it.

“That’s something,” Parker says at last, and she wonders if he’s thinking along the same lines.

“It’s all there is,” she says. “They should contact the Allans before the press conference announcement thing first. Just in case.”

“Just in case.”

This time, the quiet that stretches between them doesn’t feel quite so uneasy, and at last, Spider-Man sighs, long and heavy, and makes like he wants to fiddle with his mask again.

“It’s a mess,” he says.

“It’s a mess,” MJ agrees, and then thinks about how small he’d sounded, about the way that guilt comes with the territory, according to the boy next to her. “But it was a mess before any of us.”

“How do you mean?” he asks, instead of agreeing.

“It was a mess after the Chitauri invasion,” MJ says, because everything changed back then, when they were all far too young to have any say in the matter, when it was unfair to expect that they ever would. “It was a mess when Toomes’s business was shut out by Stark’s. That was eight years ago.”

“God,” Parker says, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Eight years of this.”

“Eight years,” she says again, by way of agreement. “And it was a mess long before me. And it was a mess long before you.”

“I—”

She doesn’t even let him start to stutter out a denial.

“I’m not saying you’re secretly a high school student,” she says, even though that is pretty much exactly what she’s saying. “I’m saying, you only started Spider-manning a couple months ago.”

She waits for him to argue.

“Okay,” he says, relenting. “Okay, fair.”

“You only got the suit after the battle in Germany, so I’m assuming that that’s when you met Tony Stark.”

“No comment.”

She looks over at him, at the way he tugs at the strings around the neck of his sad little replacement suit.

“No suit now, though,” she observes, and hopes like anything she doesn’t sound too curious.

“No,” he says, and if he can tell how badly she wants to ask, he doesn’t let on. “No suit.”

His voice is solemn, though, somber and serious once more.

“You okay?” MJ asks, and immediately wishes she hadn’t, because it sounds just as dumb coming from her as it did when he asked about Liz.

She wants to ask how fast he heals.

She thinks of the videos from the beach, remembers the awful _thump_ each time Liz’s father stomped him down into the sand.

She wants to ask if the suit helps at all.

But then Parker—no, Spider-Man, this, right here, is Spider-Man, crappy suit and all—Spider-Man stops dead on the sidewalk again, and so she stops, too, and waits.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, sudden and intense. “About Liz. And Mrs. Toomes—Mrs. Allan.”

MJ starts to say that she knows this, that she never doubted it—

“But I’m not sorry that Adrian Toomes—” Spider-Man breaks off, stares down the way they’ve come, and then looks back at her. “He needed to be stopped.”

This time, there’s no doubt to his words, no self-flagellation or _mea-culpa_ -ing, just the absolute truth, but he’s looking at her like he’s halfway to desperate, like he’s begging her to understand.

“He was going to hurt people,” he says. “Or allow people to be hurt. And I couldn’t—it wasn’t just me. If it was just me, I would—I would have—”

In a rush, MJ realizes what he’s trying to say, and she hates it.

“You would have let him?”

He doesn’t answer, and that’s an answer in and of itself.

MJ doesn’t really think there are any Alexandre Dumas quotes for this.

So instead, she starts walking again, waits for him to match her steps with his own, and then says, “That’s a problem, Bug Boy.”

“I know.”

“You need to get some help for that.”

“Eh,” he says, and forces his voice to be light again. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Dude,” MJ says, because for one moment, she was dangerously close to calling him _Peter_. “You need to get some help for that.”

“I’ll figure it out,” he says again, and she crosses her arms and uses her extra couple inches to glare down at him, so that he relents at last.

“Michelle,” he says, and his voice isn’t as serious as it was before, but it isn’t the forced lightness, either, so she’ll take it. “I’ll figure it out.”

It’s all she can do.

For a second, the incredibly stupid urge to say _call me MJ_ sweeps over her, but she pushes it aside and lets his non-answer slide.

“You remember my name?” she asks, all over-the-top surprise, and hopes it’ll be enough to break the solemnity of the moment.

But Parker—no, Spider-Man—no, Parker, this is Parker again, just looks at her, serious as ever.

“Of course I do.”

Well, dammit, how is she supposed to lighten the mood if he keeps saying stuff like that?

“Aw,” MJ says, and definitely doesn’t think about how she can feel the tips of her ears turning red. “You like me. Right now, you like me.”

Her Sally Field impression is passable, at best, but she thinks it’ll do, because Parker lets the weird little moment slide and frowns exaggeratedly.

“That’s not Dumas,” he says, like this is a big announcement.

“No,” MJ says. “It is not.”

He thinks about that, and she can just tell, if he were being Peter Parker, not Spider-Man, his hands would be in his pockets, or pulled back into the sleeves of his ridiculously oversized sweaters that he loves so much.

“I thought it was _really_ ,” he says, and MJ frowns, too, deliberately misunderstanding.

“Really what?”

“No,” Parker says, rolling his eyes but still playing along, because he's Peter Parker, and this is the kind of dumb banter he and Leeds get up to all the time.

She can do this, MJ thinks.

She can at least do this.

"No," he says. “Not _right_.”

“So, wrong?” she says.

“No,” he says. “The quote.”

“The quote’s right.”

“No _now_?”

“No, then.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s not wrong.”

“Really?”

“Right,” MJ says, and he laughs out loud, so that she smiles a little, too, before shaking her head and actually answering his original question. “It’s the Mandela effect. False memories of something that happened differently. Field’s usually misquoted as saying _You like me, you really like me_ , but the actual quote’s _You like me. Right now, you like me_.”

“Huh.”

“Commonly misremembered because,” MJ shrugs. “You know. Reasons.”

“And by _reasons_ , you mean that the need to ridicule female public figures, especially celebrities, is a pretty strong memory adjuster.”

That’s pretty much exactly what she means, yeah.

“Something like that.”

“Fair enough.”

Just like the first time, MJ almost doesn’t realize where they are until she recognizes her next door neighbor’s front step, and then just a few more paces, and they’re outside her door again.

“This is me,” she says, just as needlessly as the first time, except maybe a little bit more so this time, because Parker nods and glances up at the door.

“I remember,” he says.

MJ doesn’t linger this time, just nods once and starts to head up the steps—

But she pauses at the door, and can’t quite get that odd, distant tone he’d used earlier out of her head, and it’s enough to make her turn back again.

“One more quote,” she says, and Parker looks like he was thinking about swinging away already, but he stops and turns back, expectant.

“Dumas again?” he asks, and she shrugs.

“Why mess with a classic?”

That makes him laugh again, that same bright, surprised sound that kind of splutters out of him all at once.

“Alright,” he says. “I’m ready.”

MJ finds, suddenly, that she can’t quite meet the oversized eyes on his suit, and so studies a point just over his head, instead.

“’You are young, replied Athos. And your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet rememberances.’”

Parker doesn’t answer for so long that she thinks she might have said something wrong, and she looks down just in time to see him look quickly away.

“That’s not _Count of Monte Cristo_ ,” he says.

“It isn’t,” she admits. “But if you want a quote from that book, there’s this ome—‘For all evils, there are two remedies—time and silence.’”

He looks back at her then, still trying for that _I’m a superhero, nothing bothers me_ voice. “Are you saying I should start scrapbooking all my fights?”

MJ raises an eyebrow, doesn’t let his tone stick.

“No,” she says. “I’m not.”

It’s enough.

Parker sighs, knocks once on the railing that flanks the steps up to her door, where she’s still standing, holding onto her bag with both hands.

“Point taken,” he says.

MJ nods, because she guesses that’s about enough, and watches as Parker looks around for the nearest anchor, the nearest point to latch onto before swinging away.

As if he could feel her gaze, he glances back, and she’s not sure, but she thinks he might be smiling.

“Sure you won’t change your mind? About flying?” It’s just as tempting as it was the first time.

“That’s not flying,” MJ says, and he doesn’t point out that that wasn’t an answer.

“You’re right,” he says, and then, doing a bad imitation of a voice she doesn’t recognize, he adds, “It’s not enough. But it’s real close.”

She has to think about it for a second before she can place it.

“ _The Sting,”_ she says, and he snaps his fingers, like he’d been hoping she wouldn’t know it, because, again, this is Peter Parker, and Peter Parker is, first and foremost, a total dork. “1973. And still no.”

“Oh, well,” he says. “Next time.”

“Sure,” she says, and doesn’t mean it, not one bit. “Next time.”

“Goodnight, Miss Jones,” Parker says, overly formal, so that she rolls her eyes and wonders what he’d do if she called him _Mr. Parker_ in return.

“Goodnight, Mr. Spider-man.”

“Please don’t.”

“Goodnight, Bug Boy.”

“Much better.” 

And then he’s gone. 

Just like before, MJ watches until he’s out of sight.

Then she goes back inside, chats briefly with her mom until she can make her escape upstairs, because her mom wants to talk about Liz, and she can’t do that, not just yet.

She closes her bedroom door behind her, tosses her books onto the bed, and starts doing her homework for tomorrow morning.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah.
> 
> I don't know if I'll actually be able to write much more before Endgame + Far From Home make this whole series non-canon-compliant. I think I'll maybe be able to get one more and then see what those movies do to the plotline?
> 
> Thank you again for reading, you guys are the absolute best!


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